Geographic Locations

A weir is constructed each season by pounding in vertical piles, then crossing the piles with long straight sticks, then filling in vertical branches. When fish swim to the weir leader (the straight part that comes out from shore), they are diverted into the pound, where they swim around in circles. The seine net is set inside the weir to catch the herring.

Weir fishing was practiced by Maine's Natives, and was especially popular further east where big tides made putting a "Fence in the Water" relatively easy.

In the 1940s there was a herring weir in Rockport Harbor, here worked by Harlan Hurd. After a seine net is set and pursed inside the weir, the fish are dipped from the seine into a herring carrier, a sizable power boat that carried herring to a cannery and usually were cannery-owned. The late 1940s saw the height of the canning industry with the largest amounts ever packed. Just after this photo was taken herring carriers started to use fish pumps which could pump herring out of a weir or seine and into the hold of the carrier, saving hours of work.

The Gulf of Maine is shown in this part of a much larger chart, Gulf and River St. Lawrence, including the Coast from Breton Island to Cape Cod and the Island & Banks of Newfoundland. The chart was published by the well-known chart maker James Imray of London in 1853. By today's standards these charts have nowhere near the detail that we are accustomed to on our harbor and near coast charts, but they did serve to plan voyages and plot positions of the ship at sea.

Granite was king on Penoboscot Bay islands in the last quarter of the 1800s. After granite was quarried, it was often carved with decorations or carved into statues such as eagles. The work attracted skilled stone cutters from Italy and other European nations to carve figures in the granite for public buildings and churches.

Part of a panorama photograph of the Chincha Islands, off the coast of Peru, where there were tremendous guano deposits. The ships are waiting their turn to load guano for European and North American ports. The photo is taken from Middle Island, looking at the remnants of the guano heaps on North Island.